Bright Channel Tarot

02/15/2017

For anyone in the Philadelphia area: I'll be giving a Tarot writing workshop at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Mt. Airy on Sunday afternoon, 4 to 6 p.m. The idea is using a simple Tarot spread to generate themes, interpretations, and plot ideas. Elliott Bat Tzedek, who organizes the "On Sundays We Write!" series at the bookshop, points out that using the Tarot for this purpose can be very helpful if you're suffering from writer's block.

Registration is at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-from-the-tarot-with-sibelan-forrester-tickets-31655037068 and costs $20.00

On Sundays, We Write! Writing From the Tarot with Sibelan Forrester The symbols of the tarot allow us to access stories, dreams, the unconscious, and the pre-conscious. Sibelan Forrester will lead an exploration of the cards, with each writer creating their own small spread to use as a writing pro...

10/14/2016

More thoughts about the numerical and societal significance of the various suits. The Pentacles ("coins" in some languages) are the third suit, indicating groups larger than the Cup duo of two lovers or two friends. They extend out to family groups and work places, and the suit can speak of economic and professional success (or frustration) as well as family reputation and so on. (The suit is "feminine" in its gender orientation - related to earth and astrological earth signs: Ta**us, Virgo, Capricorn. The equivalent in playing cards is clubs, I think.)

The fourth and final suit are the Swords, which speak of power and the largest societal groups: neighborhoods, politics, and laws, often relationships with groups too big for a person to know everyone involved. When I began reading Tarot, I often shrugged about the swords; what did I (little hippie that I was) care about power? But the meanings of the cards, and many of the images, show that power includes the power of self-protection and drawing boundaries, saying No and having that hold. Experience in the realm of the swords is needed not only to make changes in the world, but also to realize one's own power.

04/13/2016

The systematic nature of some aspects of the Tarot really does seem linked with alchemy (and it's telling that Jung was interested in both): a love for system helps to make sense of these aspects. The first suit is the Rods, which speak of intellectual and spiritual matters. Even if the card signifies connections with others, the emphasis is on the first person: what the querent believes, creates, invents. The Rods are sometimes depicted as clubs or sticks that may strike out, as if the idea moves with energy or even violence to convince others, to compete with other ideas.

The second suit, the Cups, speak of emotions and signify one-on-one relationships. Even if a card suggests festivity or a group of friends, the relationships are intimate, calling up the second person, one the querent loves or one who loves the querent. (One insight I had recently, though not connected immediately with Tarot: if you love someone, that love is your own feeling and pleasure, inspired by the person you love but not in itself something that other person need be concerned with. When love emerges from inside and becomes an active care and communication, that is something else.) The Cups are located in that space between two people - friends or lovers or very close family members. The Cups are often pictured containing wine (or if they are fallen with the wine spilled on the ground: the pain of a lost emotional connection); emotions can be intoxicating, for good or ill.

(Numbers 3 and 4 to follow.)

03/21/2016

And reemerging from the winter now: Coming up, some micro-lectures about the four suits of Tarot cards.

10/20/2015

A shoutout to Tarot reader and Reiki specialist Alexandra Difilippo, who was reading cards at Spiral Books in Manayunk last Saturday evening. Almost the simplest possible Tarot reading: three cards, one for past, one for present, and one for future (and using a lovely deck that the bookstore will soon have back in stock). The interpretation was gentle but strong, with the gift and the warning of each card specified. I would highly recommend her!

Her card gives the URL of The Reiki School: http://www.TheReikiSchool.com/

08/13/2015

Fascinating to me that the Tarot deck is based on playing cards, rather than vice versa. Many traditions of fortune telling use ordinary playing cards. A fun fact from Russian folk practice: if you want to tell fortunes with a deck that has been used to play cards, you have to get a virgin to sit on the deck. That purifies it, so to speak, removing whatever pollution or game-of-chance aspect the card-playing had introduced. (How many works of fiction or film connect fortune with gambling or chance, though?) The other way to render the deck usable for fortune telling (if no virgins are handy, or you feel embarrassed asking?) is to pass it through a door handle. The handles in question are shaped like a squared-off C (and the word for such a handle also means "parenthesis").

07/28/2015

Mme S has been out of town, but this morning did the first reading in a long time. The tentative plan for a day of readings in New Jersey is off, since the lovely shop is closing when the lease runs out. Watch this space for more updates!

07/14/2015

An excellent recent article in Atlas Obscura gives some Tarot history, and the history of availability of the cards.

Indeed, if there weren't cards one could come across and buy, how many of us could have started reading them?

- Mme S

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-deck-of-cards-that-made-tarot-a-global-phenomenon

Picture a deck of tarot cards. What do you see? Maybe the Magician in his rich red robes, right arm raised high above him. Or the skeleton on horseback for...

07/13/2015

There are many kinds of Tarot readings: Madame S prefers not the quick "should I buy a lottery ticket tomorrow," nor the lengthy Tree or Life, but a 4-to-6-month look into the near future. Though this one too rests on a more distant past and offers a hint of what might eventually happen, if things do not change.

07/13/2015

Just starting to put this page together - Facebook really isn't set up for something like a Tarot reading enterprise. In particular, the e-mail address for making appointments isn't very visible: it's madame.sibela@gmail.com - hours are by appointment, anywhere in the Media area.